A vocabulary lesson based on Glee

Some weeks ago BrELT organized its first online event, the BrELT Queer Day. During one of the talks I told my friend Thiago Veigga about the first time I remembered bringing up the topic of sexuality with my students. I did a little digging recently and it turns out it was in 2011, using an episode of Glee.

The lesson’s main  aim was vocabulary, but the pre and post watching activities ended up being very interesting and leading to some very interesting conversation. Initially, this lesson was given to a group of young adults who were at university (19-22-year-olds), but it can also be used with younger or older students by changing the questions slightly. I’d recommend this for students who are B2 or higher. If you have access to the original episode with subtitles, that would work with B1 students as well.

Finally, for this lesson, I’m going to try out writing the post in a similar way to what Cecila Nobre has been doing on her blog (which you should definitely check out by the way).

6-hour workday: a business conversation lesson.

The length of workday has been a hot topic in Brazil lately and I thought contrasting Brazil’s proposal (having a 12-hour workday) with what has been happening in Sweden (experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of a 6-hour workday).

This is a lesson better suited to adults, but if you have a mixed group (adults and adolescents) you can get the younger students to compare workdays with how long their school days are.

The text has been shortened a little and you can use the material with B1+ students. If you are working with intermediate students, do remember to use the close captions available in the video – they are generally pretty accurate.

Paralympics: a conversation lesson

I had wanted to have a lesson about the Paralympics for a couple of weeks now, but hadn’t been able to find an article or video to do it. Then Cecilia Nobre shared a video on Facebook entitled ‘it’s time to stop calling disabled people inspirational’ and I thought that was an interesting way to approach it.

This lesson could be used with adults or adolescents who are B2+ but with some support this lesson could also be adapted to B1 students.

Ryan Lochte: a conversation lesson

The Olympic games are the gift that keeps on giving for conversation lessons. Although the games ended two weeks ago, they are still being talked about and we now have the Paralympic games starting tomorrow.

The Ryan Lochte story interests me firstly because I like swimming, but also because it’s so crazy that you almost end up believing it (as in, nobody would be that stupid and entitled, would they?).

This lesson can be used with students who are B1+, but there are follow-up activities for C1 students as well.